Normally, when I do the Small Screen Diary, I start with the actual order in which I watched the shows. Today, I actually want to throw American Hostage, Season 1, Episode 1, right up at the top. This is the new MGM+ drama, and it was actually one of the later things I watched during the day, but it also had one of the more interesting audio description tracks. I didn’t get to listen to the credits at the end, so I don’t have the full AD information yet, but some choices are definitely being made here. This is the same true story that was featured recently in the movie Dead Man’s Wire, starring Bill Skarsgård, just another retelling of the Tony Kiritsis hostage situation. Jon Hamm previously starred in the American Hostage scripted podcast about the case, and he reprises the role of Indianapolis radio newsman Fred Heckman here, opposite Giovanni Ribisi as Tony Kiritsis. Tony takes mortgage broker Dick Hall, played by Kristoffer Polaha, hostage and eventually gets Heckman on the phone, giving Tony an opportunity to speak his mind while Fred hopes he can somehow talk him down. The cast also includes William Jackson Harper from The Good Place and Mireille Enos from The Killing, so MGM+ certainly didn’t skimp on recognizable actors. I don’t know how they’re going to stretch this story across eight episodes, but the pilot, at least, is interesting. That’s something. I also can’t wait to hear other people’s thoughts on American Hostage from the five people who subscribe to MGM+.

One of the reasons I wanted to bring American Hostage up immediately is that toward the beginning of the episode, the audio description makes a choice that could easily be debated. It chooses to describe over dialogue. We’re meeting Tony as he prepares for the hostage situation he’s about to initiate, and in the background we hear Jon Hamm’s Fred Heckman on the radio delivering the news. Clearly, Tony listens to Fred, and the scene is establishing that relationship before these two men ever speak to each other. The audio description chooses to use Fred’s broadcast almost as background chatter and talks over portions of it so that we get a much more detailed description of Tony’s preparation. That means you’re not entirely able to follow everything Fred is saying, but the specifics of those news stories aren’t necessarily important. What’s important is establishing that Tony listens to this guy and considers him a truth teller. I thought it was a bold choice because most audio description writers would probably be afraid to do it. Sometimes people are even afraid of describing through songs in movies, and this is much closer to actual dialogue. Normally, I would bristle at the idea of talking over dialogue, but I actually like the choice here. It’s one of those rare occasions when it’s okay to bend the rules because the reward is worth it. We learn far more about Tony and what he’s physically doing to prepare for this situation than we otherwise would have. It’s a maximalist approach to audio description, and in this particular scene, I think it works.

Now, the rest of the shows are going to be in the order I actually watched them. I kept trying to finish The Audacity on AMC+ with Season 1, Episode 7, and the show has definitely become more interesting. This is the episode where the company starts trying to work with Veterans Affairs and roll out the AI they’ve been developing to see how it can interact with and potentially help veterans. The first encounter goes hilariously awful, and things improve later on. The audio description here is just okay. There are times when there’s a beat where they could have put something in, and they simply choose not to. It’s an interesting contrast to what I was just talking about with American Hostage, where it felt like we had a maximalist writer trying to fit as much description into the available space as possible. The Audacity feels like it has a minimalist writer who believes a few tidbits here and there will get us through the story. It’s functional, but I don’t necessarily love it. The Audacity is also now on Netflix for people who don’t have AMC+ and want to check it out there.

I followed that with Ghosts, Season 5, Episode 14, “The Water Heater,” which is Isaac’s election episode. It all comes down to the water heater and whether Isaac can preserve it, and eventually he has to learn to trust himself a little more and not allow his campaign to be defined by a lie. Things interestingly work out for him anyway. Ghosts also has an interesting release schedule coming up, with specials planned before the actual sixth season premieres at midseason, which is such a weird flex for CBS with one of its buzziest shows. Then again, ABC did essentially the same thing with High Potential, arguably its buzziest drama, by pushing it to midseason, and CBS also has Matlock waiting for midseason. Maybe midseason is the new hotness. The audio description for Ghosts is done by Media Access Group, and they always do a decent job with this show.

I watched Adventure Time: Side Quests, Season 1, Episode 3, which basically has Finn and Jake learning how to properly duel as esteemed gentlemen over something silly. That’s essentially enough to fill out the 10-to-12-minute running time of an episode. Deluxe is here with the audio description, with Laura Post narrating, and they do a nice job. I’m still surprised that Disney paid for synthetic audio description for X-Men ‘97, which is its own property. Disney owns Marvel. Yet these little mini-things they’ve done for Adventure Time and The Wonderfully Weird World of Gumball get excellent human audio description from Deluxe, despite not actually being Disney properties. Sometimes I want to crawl inside people’s heads and figure out exactly what they’re thinking when they make these decisions, because I cannot make the math math.

Next was The Legend of Vox Machina, Season 4, Episode 4, a show that consistently has great audio description, also from Media Access Group. Our gang of Vox Machina moves along, although the weird thing about this episode was that, considering where the previous episode ended, I wasn’t quite sure how we transitioned into where we were at the beginning of this one. The connective tissue felt a little thin. Maybe if I had binge-watched the episodes back-to-back, I would have understood or felt the transition more naturally, but watching them separately, I was surprised at how easily we moved into Episode 4 without me feeling like everything from Episode 3 had been completely resolved. It’s not necessarily a major complaint, but it did leave me wondering for a moment whether I had somehow missed something.

I also watched Have I Got News for You, Season 5, Episode 2, on HBO Max, the one show today without audio description. Their guests this week were Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger and Kara Swisher, and there was certainly no shortage of news for Roy Wood Jr., Amber Ruffin and Michael Ian Black to work with. This is one of those shows where I understand why audio description probably isn’t high on anyone’s priority list because of the incredibly fast turnaround. The show drops on Saturday, and they’re presumably producing it very close to air, so attaching an audio description track that quickly would require an extremely fast turnaround. Still, the CNN shows that port over to HBO Max, including some CNN documentaries that would be interesting to watch, generally seem to elude the accessibility button. Unlike Last Week Tonight, which does eventually get audio description even if I am far too impatient to wait for it, Have I Got News for You never seems to get one.

I finished out the day with The Paper, Season 2, Episode 2, on Peacock, with audio description by IYUNO and narration by Dave Wallace. I know this is one of those tracks that some people are going to hate because they feel like it’s too emotive or expressive, but damn if this isn’t the most human thing I heard all day. There is absolutely nothing synthetic about Dave Wallace’s performance. I feel like Dave is one of a handful of narrators who should be celebrated specifically because, as companies continue trying to perfect synthetic voices until we’re supposedly unable to tell whether they’re human, someone like Dave comes along and gives you such expressive description that it becomes impossible not to know there’s an actual person behind that microphone. The writing is solid, Dave is terrific, and the episode itself was cute and funny.

The one thing I’m not completely sold on with The Paper is what they’re doing with their leads, because they’re already putting them together romantically and really pressing down on the gas pedal. Part of what made Jim and Pam work so well on The Office was that the will-they-won’t-they actually lasted for a while. I know The Paper probably feels justified because it’s in its second season and therefore thinks it has earned this, but it needs to remember that we’re at the front of the second season and the show produces far fewer episodes than The Office did. Technically, this is only the 12th episode of The Paper, and they’re already making out on a couch. For a traditional network sitcom, Episode 12 wouldn’t even get you out of the first season. Streaming and reduced episode orders have gaslit us into believing this is normal now. We really barely know these characters, and it kind of feels that way to me. You can’t quite call this a Jim and Pam situation when Jim and Pam had significantly more runway before their relationship got anywhere close to this point.

As far as the best audio description goes, this one was tough. I love what The Paper is doing, and Dave Wallace’s expressive narration is exactly the kind of unmistakably human performance I want to celebrate. But there’s a reason I put American Hostage at the top today. I really appreciated the swing that track took. At first, I bristled at the idea of talking over Fred’s dialogue, but once I realized that the specifics of what he was saying weren’t important and that the description was giving us valuable visual information about Tony and his preparation, I understood the choice. I think blind audiences were ultimately better served by having that information. Sometimes accessibility doesn’t mean rigidly following a rulebook. Sometimes you have to understand why the rule exists well enough to know when breaking it actually gives us more.

At the bottom, I could easily put Have I Got News for You simply because it doesn’t have audio description at all, and I think that’s where I’ll leave it. I don’t love the audio description on The Audacity either, especially after comparing its minimalist approach to what American Hostage accomplished, but at least The Audacity has a track. Have I Got News for You doesn’t, and unlike Last Week Tonight, where audio description tends to arrive late and I’m simply impatient, this show never gets it. So American Hostage takes the audio description crown for the day, while Have I Got News for You sits at the bottom by default.